英語聽力理解障礙及其應對策略論文

1、contentsacknowledgements iabstract in chinese iiabstract in english ivpart i introduction 1part ii a brief review of listening comprehension researches 32.1 the emergence of listening comprehension researches 32.1.1 the nature of listening 32.1.2 researches on the teaching of listening 32.2 the mode

2、ls of listening comprehension 42.3 researches on listening strategies 4part iii an investigation of listening obstacles in the intermediate institutes 63.1 a questionnaire 63.2 an analysis of the status quo of the students 83.2.1 obstacles in listening 83.2.2 consideration about the obstacles in tea

3、ching listening 10part iv strategies of eliminating the obstacles in listening comprehension 124.1 students role 124.1.1 being an active listener 124.1.2 understanding the nature of listening 134.2 teachers role 134.2.1 improving the teaching of pronunciation 134.2.2 selecting suitable listening mat

4、erials 154.2.3 developing the students listening strategies 164.2.3.1 guessing new words from the context 164.2.3.2 finding the main idea 184.2.3.3 making inference 194.2.3.4 predicting 214.2.3.5 taking notes 234.2.3.6 building background knowledge 24part v conclusion 26bibliography 28acknowledgemen

5、tsi am greatly indebted to my supervisor, professor zhang shuning, whoprovided me with different sources of information to help me form and developthe idea of this thesis. i owe much gratitude to his kindness and patience inchecking my work in great detail.my indebtedness goes to all the professors

6、who taught me in the last two years.they are professor liu shaozhong, professor tang gaoyuan, professor li xiao,professor liao fengrong, professor chen jitang, professor liang zhengyu, professorralph samuelson, professor qin shiyi, and professor chen derong. my appreciationalso goes to my classmates

7、 and my friends for their great help and encouragement.i英語聽力理解障礙及應對策略外國語學院 2002 級教育碩士研究生: 張維益導師：張叔寧中文摘要在英語學習中，聽力是最難掌握的語言技能之一。聽力理解作為一項輸入性技能，是學習者發(fā)展其他語言技能的基礎。長期以來，中國的英語教學過于強調(diào)讀和寫的技能訓練，忽略聽和說的能力的培養(yǎng)，尤其是在初級學習階段。所以，許多英語教師會碰到這樣的現(xiàn)象，不少學生英語考試得高分，但聽說能力卻跟不上。教師們從反省自己的教學過程出發(fā)，試圖找到解決問題的方案。結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)，許多學生之所以聽說能力差，是因為在學習過程中，沒

8、有進行足夠的聽說訓練，而且缺乏科學的策略指導。本文即以英語聽力理解為論題，在前人研究的基礎上，結(jié)合教學中的實際情況，找出影響學生聽力理解的障礙，討論如何對學生進行策略訓練，提高聽力技巧技能。首先，教師應該幫助學生正確認識聽力理解的實質(zhì)和過程。當前許多研究者從心理語言學、認知學、語用學等領域展開對聽力理解的研究。綜合眾多學者的觀點，筆者認為聽力理解的實質(zhì)是：聽力理解是一個復雜的主動的心理活動，是聽者運用已有語言知識、生活經(jīng)驗和文化背景知識對口頭語篇或音響信息相互作用的結(jié)果。聽力理解的過程有“自下而上”和“自上而下”兩種模式。在“自下而上”模式中，聽者更多地注重語音、語調(diào)、詞匯和語法的分析；而在“

9、自上而下”模式中，聽者更多地利用已有的知識經(jīng)驗和文化背景知識去重構(gòu)所聽語篇的含義。在實際的聽力理解活動中，聽者同時采取兩種模式進行。為了找出影響學生聽力理解的障礙，筆者設計了一份問卷，調(diào)查學生的聽力學習情況。從問卷的調(diào)查數(shù)據(jù)來看，學生普遍存在的聽力障礙有兩大類：一、語言因素。語言知識主要指語音、詞匯、語法方面的知識。語言知識是聽力理解的物質(zhì)基礎。語音語調(diào)不正確，詞匯量少，語法結(jié)構(gòu)復雜是語言因素中的主要障礙。二、非語言因素。主要包括心理因素，聽力技巧與策略，背景知識等。心理方面的因素體現(xiàn)在不少學生對聽力學習抱有畏難心理、厭倦心理，失去克服聽力困難的信心。由于很多學生缺乏對聽力理解的正確認識，他們

10、認為成功的聽力理解就是 100%地聽懂材料中的每一個單詞。這無疑給學習帶來了不必要的壓力。聽力技巧與策略是聽力教學的重要內(nèi)容之一。但不少學生沒有很好掌握諸如根據(jù)上下文猜測新詞、抓主題大意、推理、預測等聽力理解過程中常用的技巧。聽力策略可定義為：學生為了提高聽力學習的效果，在學習過程中所采取的學習技巧、方法或者有意識的行動。如：為了熟悉地道的英語語音語調(diào)，觀看原聲英文影片；為了使自己在聽音的過程中能集中精神，有選擇地記錄關鍵詞和重要信息。在聽力理解過程中，背景知識是不可或缺的重要因素。但很多學生都坦然承認，他們對英美文化背景知識了解不多。有時，學生在聽一篇沒有新詞的短文或一則對話，由于缺乏相應的

11、背景知識，聽完之后還是沒能說出大意是什么。本文的重點是針對學生存在的聽力學習障礙，探討有效的聽力理解策略，掃ii除障礙，提高聽力水平。從學生方面來說，要正確認識聽力理解的實質(zhì)，以積極主動的學習態(tài)度對待聽力學習，配合教師進行各項聽力理解策略的培訓，以掃除聽力學習中的障礙；從教師方面來說，改進教學手段和技巧，提高課堂教學質(zhì)量是取得聽力教學成功的關鍵。教師要鼓勵學生樹立攻克聽力難關的信心；運用現(xiàn)代多媒體電教手段進行聽力教學，激起學生學習的興趣；在聽力教學中，要進行較為系統(tǒng)的語音教學，因為聽力理解主要是靠語音信號傳遞信息；教師要選擇各種類型的聽力材料，內(nèi)容包括短文、對話、故事、新聞等，有針對性地訓練學

12、生的各種聽力技巧和策略，如：根據(jù)上下文猜測新詞；歸納主題大意；根據(jù)已知的事實進行推理、預測；利用縮寫和符號等速記手段節(jié)約記筆記的時間；通過閱讀英文報刊雜志，觀看英文影片，利用因特網(wǎng)等學習資源，擴大視野，豐富背景知識。關鍵詞： 聽力理解 ; 障礙 ; 聽力技能 ; 聽力策略; 背景知識iiiobstacles and corresponding strategiesin english listening comprehensionpostgraduate: zhang weiyi, grade: 2002, college of foreign studies supervisor: zhan

13、g shuningabstractlistening is considered to be one of the most difficult skills in english learning.as one of the receptive skills, listening is the foundation to develop other languageskills. for a long period of time, the teaching of english in china has mainly focusedon the teaching of reading an

14、d writing in the early stage of learning and neglected theteaching of listening and speaking. many teachers are puzzled at the situation in theenglish class: though many students can get a good mark in english test, not all ofthem can perform well in listening and speaking. they reflect on what was

15、wrongwith the teaching and try to find out the solutions to these problems. and it is obviousthat the learners do not have enough and effective listening and speaking practice in ascientific way. this thesis will focus on listening. the author mainly analyzes thecommon obstacles in the learning of l

16、istening and discusses how to develop thelistening strategies to improve the ability of listening comprehension.first of all, teachers should help the students understand the nature and theprocess of listening comprehension. a number of experts in the field of cognitivepsychology, psycholinguistics

17、and pragmatics offer their views to describe the natureand the procedure of listening comprehension. according to the views of the experts,listening comprehension is an active process and an interaction between the listenerslinguistic competence, background knowledge and the aural discourse and the

18、soundmessage. and the procedure of the listening comprehension is divided into threemodels: bottom-up processing, top-down processing, and the integration of bothbottom-up and top-down processing. in bottom-up processing, listeners focus on thesounds, words, intonation, and grammatical structures; i

19、n top-down processing, thelisteners make good use of their prior knowledge and background knowledge tointerpret the spoken discourse. in actual listening practice, students usually use bothbottom-up and top-down processing models.in order to find out the obstacles in listening, the author designed a

20、 questionnaireto collect data. seen from the data, the obstacles mainly lie in two aspects:1. linguistic factors: including the knowledge of english pronunciation,vocabulary and grammar. language knowledge is the basic foundation of listeningcomprehension. poor pronunciation and limited vocabulary a

21、re the principal obstaclesin the aspect of language knowledge.2. nonlinguistic factors: including psychological factors, listening skills andstrategies, background knowledge.some students are tired of listening. they have lost their confidence to overcomethe difficulties because they dont have a cor

22、rect idea of listening comprehension.they take it for granted that the successful listening is 100% understanding of thelistening materials. so they have given themselves unnecessary anxiety.ivlistening skills and strategies are both important teaching contents. however,some students dont know much

23、about how to guess the unknown words from thecontext; how to find the main idea of a passage; how to make inference and predict.listening strategies can be defined as the conscious activities of adopting the listeningtechniques and skills and other methods to facilitate the successful listeningcompr

24、ehension. for example, students can watch english films to get familiar withthe pronunciations of the native speakers; or force themselves to follow the pace withthe speakers thinking process by taking notes of key words and importantinformation.background knowledge plays a key role in listening com

25、prehension. somestudents confess that they know little about the background of english speakingcountries. as a result, they fail in understanding a passage or a conversation thoughthere are no new words at all, just because of the lack of relevant backgroundknowledge.the core of this thesis is to di

26、scuss the corresponding strategies of eliminating theobstacles in listening. for the part of students, their job is to build confidence to meetthe challenge, to get a correct idea of the nature of listening comprehension, to mastersome effective listening strategies to smooth away the obstacles in l

27、istening. for thepart of teachers, improving the teaching methods and skills, enhancing the quality ofthe listening classes are the crucial factors to achieve success in the teaching oflistening.teachers should encourage students to build confidence to overcome thedifficulties in listening; they sho

28、uld make good use of the multi-media to present thelistening materials and arouse the students interest. the teaching of pronunciationshould be given enough consideration because the information is delivered throughthe aural signals.teachers should select different types of listening materials to tr

29、ain specificlistening skills, such as guessing the new words from the context, finding the mainidea, making inference and prediction, taking notes in the form of abbreviations andsymbols and etc. as for the building of background knowledge, the students shouldmake good use of the authentic materials

30、 for reading and listening. they can also surfthe internet and learn more about the english speaking countries.key words:listening comprehension ; obstacles; listening skillslistening strategies ; background knowledgevpart i introductionthe final goal of mastering a language is to communicate with o

31、thers, using theskills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. according to the data investigatedby rivers and temperly (1978), among the time an individual is engaged incommunication, approximately 9% is devoted to writing, 16% to reading, 30% tospeaking and 45% to listening (see hedge, 2002:

32、228). the data indicates thateffective listening comprehension is one of the guarantees to carry out successfulcommunication and it should be considered as the most important in english teaching.during the process of learning english, the listening skill is the only one overwhich the learner has lit

33、tle or no control. one can read, speak, and write at ones ownpace, level of vocabulary and syntax, using a dictionary if necessary. but whenlistening, the listeners have to listen at someone elses pace, level of vocabulary andsyntax. for example, the speed and clarity of spoken texts are often compl

34、etely out ofthe listeners control when listening to the announcement in the airport, listening toradio and watching films and so on. if the listener does not understand the wordswhile they are still “in the air”, it is usually too late (davies, pearse, 2002: 75).both teachers and students realize th

35、e importance of listening ability in englishlearning. but it is really not an easy job to acquire listening ability. teachers complainthere are not enough suitable materials needed in the schools. students are tired ofattending listening classes because they dont understand much of the material andm

36、ost of them dont know much about the skills and strategies while practicinglistening comprehension; and they dont have enough background knowledge relevantto the topics of the passages. when listening to the text, if they cannot understandsome new words or phrases, most of them will feel upset and l

37、ose patience andconfidence in the rest of the content. they hope to understand each word of the texteven at the early stage of learning. these wrong ideas towards listeningcomprehension prove that students dont grasp the nature of listening comprehension.they dont realize that even in native languag

38、e listening, comprehension is alwaysselective and partial.as for some teachers, the model of listening teaching still remains the traditionalone: explain the new words-play the tape-do the exercises-check the answers.usually, they test the students listening ability before they instruct the skills a

39、ndstrategies to the students. they only focus on the right answer to the question whileneglecting the process of learning. some teachers dont know how to deal with thematerials, to design the suitable exercises to train specific listening skills. when theyfind that the students cannot follow, they j

40、ust replay the tape several times. its nottotally the teachers fault because listening course has just been set up for no morethan 30 years in china. it was set up to meet the demand of tofel in 1970s. and itdidnt arouse the attention until the college entrance examination covered 30 points in1999 a

41、nd the college students were required to pass band-4 when they finished theundergraduate program. from then on, articles focusing on the teaching of englishlistening frequently appear in the magazines and journals.with the globalization of the economy and the entry of wto as well as the “great1explo

42、it” in the western part of china, the talents who have high proficiency level inenglish are in great demand. the new syllabus for the college english curriculumstresses not only the comprehensive skills, but also the competence of oral andlistening english. though it is not necessary for the student

43、s in the intermediateschools to pass college english test, they do show great enthusiasm in the test,because they regard it as a good way to check the level of their english proficiency.of course, the learning of listening is not just to meet the test-oriented goals. as themost world-widely spoken l

44、anguage, english is the most important media language totransfer all kinds of information from all over the world. so information input gainedfrom english listening/reading helps a person to get a better understanding of theworld. and it is also an important tool to develop ones career in the 21st c

45、entury.the author of this thesis tries to probe how to help learners to master englishlistening skills, on the ground of the combination of the studies of many linguisticsworks and years of experience in the teaching of listening. firstly, the authorintroduces some researches on listening comprehens

46、ion. secondly, a questionnaireaiming at finding out the obstacles in listening comprehension will be presented. thenthe author focuses on how to develop effective listening strategies to eliminate theobstacles. finally it arrives at a conclusion.2part ii a brief review of listening comprehension res

47、earches2.1 the emergence of listening comprehension researches2.1.1 the nature of listeningwhen we study how to conduct a successful listening class in the classroom, wemust know first the nature of listening and what happen in the listeners brain. currentunderstanding of the nature of listening com

48、prehension draws on research inpsycholinguistics, semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and cognitive science(e.g., clark and clark 1997, leech 1997, schank and abelson 1997, marslen-wilsonand tyler 1980, clark and carson 1982, dore and mcdermott 1982, see richards,2001: 189).much of the lingui

49、stic and psycholinguistic literature on comprehension suggeststhat propositions are the basic units of meaning involved in comprehension and thatthe listeners ultimate goals is to determine the propositions that an utterance orspeech event expressed (clark and clark 1997, foss and haikes 1978, see r

50、ichards,2001: 190).some researchers turn to pragmatics to find out the nature of listeningcomprehension. pragmatics is the study of the way language is used in particularcontexts to achieve particular ends (nunan, 2001). and leech describes it as“pragmatics deals with that meaning as it is interpreted interactionally in a givensituation” (see richards, 2001: 191). the researchers who employ this point toillustrate the nature of listening comprehension argue